Is this site Catholic or Anglican or what?

Catholic. The Mass readings and the Liturgy of the Hours are those of the
Catholic Church and their content is the same as in the Latin edition of
the Liturgy of the Hours published by the
Vatican. The calendar used is the General Calendar, with local
calendars included where we have details of them.

This question is about different texts. If you are concerned about a different translation, see this answer.

If the calendars don't match, then either you've chosen
the wrong local calendar for your location, or we've got
something wrong. Please let us know if you find any discrepancies: there
are bound to be some because this is such a large project.

Similarly, do please let us know if a reading doesn't match what you expect.
It could well be that we've mistyped something.

On the other hand it may just be that there is more than one allowable
reading for the day in question, or that your book has got things
wrong. This
blog entry goes into more detail. This
blog entry gives a detailed example where the lectionaries seem to get
it wrong and Universalis (together with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops)
gets it right. (Actually, the lectionaries are right if you read the rubrics
carefully, but it's easy not to notice this).

If you see a discrepancy you don't understand, do ask us. Let us know what you expected to see and what you are seeing, and we will do our best to help.

If Psalm
94(95) appears inside an Hour when you would have expected
something else, this is not a mistake but the result of an allowable variation in the Invitatory Psalm.

One final point about the Office of Readings: Universalis
is based on the 1985 edition of the Latin Breviary, which is a bit of a
mess in that the General Introduction refers to a 2-year cycle of Scripture
and patristic readings but never specifies it; and the texts in the breviary
itself are for a 1-year cycle. Universalis therefore does this 1-year cycle
of readings. Now that details of 2-year cycles are more widely available,
Universalis may at some point switch to a 2-year cycle, but given the amount
of translation that needs to be done, this won't happen at once.

Whenever I visit Universalis, it tells me that today
is January 11. Help!

If Universalis appears to get stuck on a particular date, and it stays
the same day after day, this is not a fault in the site, but a problem at
your end.

Check the URL that you are using

It is just possible that the Web address (URL) that you are using to
access Universalis has a date built into it. Look at the address that
your browser says it is displaying (the thing that begins with http://www.universalis.com/).
If it has an 8-digit number in it somewhere (something like /20020111/)
then that is an explicit date. Remove the date and one of the slashes,
and try again. (If you see something like /0100/ or /-0500/
then don't worry, because that is a time zone and not a date).

About the cache

Your web browser stores recently accessed pages on your computer (in
an area called a "cache"), so that if you ask for a page again,
it does not have to go back to the original site and retrieve it again.
This cacheing process is a good thing, because it saves time and Internet
traffic, but it can be a bad thing if the page has changed since the last
time you looked at it - your browser won't know this, because it won't
be looking at the site in order to check.
Universalis relies on using a single page address for today's readings,
which means that so the content of a Universalis page will change from
day to day. The HTTP standard, which defines how web pages are retrieved
and used, has a provision for this: if a page contains an expiry time,
then the browser should discard that page from the cache when that time
is reached, and should retrieve the page again if the user asks for it.
Universalis marks all the pages that it generates with an expiry time,
and most of the time, most people's browsers respect it, and all is well.
Very occasionally, something goes wrong and the browser obstinately remembers
a Universalis page long after it should have forgotten it: this means
that every time you visit Universalis, your browser doesn't even bother
to contact us: it just serves up the same old page over and over again.

Check your computer's date and time

If your computer's battery has gone flat and it thinks that this is
1980, the browser will keep Universalis pages (which expire in 2003 or
later) for ever.

Shift + Refresh

With many browsers, if you hold down Shift while pressing the Refresh
button, you are telling the browser to ignore the cache and go straight
to the web site.

Clearing the cache

For a more general solution, you can empty the cache and start again.
In Internet Explorer, you do this by selecting "Tools > Internet
Options > General > Browsing History > Delete > Temporary
Internet Files".In Opera, use "File > Preferences > History
and Cache". In Firefox, use "Tools > Clear Private Data".
In Safari, use "Edit > Empty Cache". In Google Chrome, click
on the "Customise and Control" spanner and then select "Clear
Browsing Data > Empty the Cache".

If this doesn't help

There must be another cache operating between you and us. Possibly you
are accessing the Internet through a "proxy server", which is
a computer that acts as a cache and filter on behalf of a whole group
of users - the users on a local network, or the customers of a particular
Internet service provider. If this is the case, you will have to contact
whoever is responsible for the proxy and get them to make it work properly;
or find a way of telling your browser to connect directly without using
the proxy at all.

It is called the Liturgy of the Hours because the different parts of it
are intended for different hours of the day. In "Divine Office",
the word "Office" has its older meaning of "function, purpose,
duty". "Breviary" has the same root as "abbreviation".
It is so called because it is a single compendium that brings together antiphonals,
lectionaries, responsories, and other sources of liturgical materials.

The Invitatory Psalm opens the whole Office of each day: it calls us together
to pray and praise God throughout the day's work. You should recite it at
the beginning of the first Hour that you say each day. On the Web we provide
two versions of Morning Prayer and the Office of Readings, one including
the Invitatory Psalm and the other omitting it. In the downloads, the Invitatory
Psalm is presented in a separate page.

The Liturgy gives you two options with the Invitatory Psalm. Either you
can use Psalm 94(95) always, or you can choose between Psalms 94(95), 99(100),
66(67), and 23(24). In the Universalis downloads we offer you two choices: "Psalm 94(95) always" or "Rotate among the allowable Invitatory Psalms". On the Universalis web site we always rotate, to give you more variety.

There is one slightly unexpected consequence of this rotation through the Invitatory Psalms. Suppose that the rotation has brought up Psalm 99(100) as the Invitatory Psalm to be used today, but that psalm happens to appear in (say) Morning Prayer. In that case the rules say that in Morning Prayer Psalm 99(100) should be replaced by Psalm 94(95), to stop you having to recite the same psalm twice. Universalis follows these rules exactly. We only mention this here in case you wonder why, on such a day, the choice of Morning Prayer psalms doesn't match what is printed in the books.

The Mass readings, and the Scripture readings in the Liturgy of the Hours,
are from the Jerusalem Bible. The Jerusalem Bible is authorised
for liturgical use at Mass in the United Kingdom and in several other parts
of the English-speaking world. (By the way, if you are thinking of buying
a bible, you should be aware that the New Jerusalem Bible is different from
the Jerusalem Bible).

In the downloadable versions of Universalis
(including the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch version), the Mass readings (and only
the Mass readings) are also available in the New American Bible
version, which is authorised for liturgical use in the United States. This
version cannot be displayed on the Web for copyright reasons.

There are two versions of the psalms and antiphons in the Liturgy of the
Hours available in Universalis. The Grail translation of the psalms
is used liturgically throughout the English-speaking world, but its owners
do not allow anyone to reproduce it on the World Wide Web. Accordingly,
there is also our own specially-commissioned translation, which is used
on our Web pages. The downloadable versions of Universalis include both
translations and you can switch between them.

The translations of the non-biblical readings of the Office of Readings
are from various sources.

The Greek numbering is used for liturgical purposes, and the
Hebrew numbering for scriptural studies. On the Universalis site, we quote
both numbers, Greek first and then Hebrew: eg. Psalm 94(95).

In the USA, the Hebrew numbering is used in the liturgy as well. Converting the numbers from Greek to Hebrew has caused an error in the US Lectionary: the psalm for Thursday of the thirteenth week in Ordinary Time in Year I of the two-year cycle is Psalm 114(116), but the American liturgist calculated 114+1=115, so in the USA and the USA alone, Psalm 113B(115) is mandated. This mistake is not repeated on Sunday of the 24th week of Year B of the three-year cycle, where the correct psalm, 114(116), is used.

We are happy for you to do this. However, if you are using the web version of Universalis (as opposed to an app, program or e-book) you should bear in mind that
the psalms are not the officially approved translations.

On the other hand, if you are in a situation where you don't have your
breviary with you, using Universalis is certainly far, far better than doing
nothing at all.

We have to be a bit careful here. We do not want you to do anything that
might infringe or weaken our copyright, so we must ask you to contact
us before you reproduce anything. We'll normally be happy to let
you reproduce as long as (a) you don't do it for gain and (b) you credit
us, with our Web address (www.universalis.com) and (c) we judge the quantity,
frequency, and purpose to be reasonable.

No. On the other hand, if you want the effect of having Universalis
content in your own site, there may be ways round this prohibition. Look
at our Free Services for Webmasters page for
some suggestions.

Liturgy of the Hours: Everyone who has heard of the project has been enthusiastic and supportive,
from parish priests and religious to senior figures in the Church. We can
see from our sales records that many priests and bishops have bought the
downloadable versions (some cardinals use Universalis as well). However, this is not a clone of any one of the printed books, and so the site cannot receive
official approval. We believe that this is unfortunate, but we fully understand
the reasons for this policy and support its application.

This situation is scheduled to change when the current revision of the Breviary is complete. The revisers are aware of the need to license electronic versions of the texts. Various dates have been put forward for the completion of the revised version, but it is a complicated process and the best thing is to say that it will be ready when it is ready.

Mass: All the texts shown here (Order of Mass, and readings and prayers) are the official texts, officially authorised.

What about the Responsorial Psalm at Mass?

The owners of the Responsorial Psalm don't allow it to be published on
the Internet. It is present in all the Universalis downloads.

What about the Psalm-Prayers in the Hours?

The psalm-prayers are prayers after each psalm, to deepen the reflection on that psalm. They do not officially exist, yet. They were put into the 1970 revision of the Liturgy of the Hours but never published, probably because time ran out and the books had to be printed.

The General Introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours talks about a “Supplement” which includes the psalm-prayers, but the Supplement hasn’t been published yet. (On the other hand, it’s only 47 years late).

Somebody, somewhere in America has invented his own set of psalm-prayers, which get printed in the American books. We don’t include them because they aren’t in the official Latin. Given this situation, there is nothing morally wrong about using the American ones, but for the moment we’re staying out of it.

The whole Liturgy of the Hours is being revised anyway (the timescale is normally quoted as “2 years or so”) and perhaps some psalm-prayers will appear then.

What about the two-year cycle in the Office of Readings?

Until practically the last minute, the Office of Readings was going to be enriched by having its First (biblical) and Second (patristic) readings spread over a two-year cycle, allowing thorough coverage of the whole of Scripture. Unfortunately, at the last minute, practical considerations intervened and the two-year cycle was abbreviated (hurriedly and dramatically, according to some stories) to a one-year one.

Accordingly, although the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours goes into great detail about the make-up of the two-year cycle, the actual published Liturgy of the Hours only has a one-year cycle of readings.

This blog post goes into more detail, but basically the situation with Universalis is that the published and printed one-year cycle is provided by default, but you can switch to a two-year cycle if you prefer it. The two-year cycle is also official as far as the First Readings are concerned, but the situation with the Second Readings is more complicated: we use the official one-year Second Readings, but match them to the two-year First Readings whenever it is possible.

For copyright reasons, the two-year cycle of First Readings is not available in the USA or Canada.

Different localities have different local calendars of their own. These
have some local feasts, and occasionally transfer celebrations of the General
Calendar to a different date. Use our Location
page to choose the calendar nearest yours (like most parts of Universalis,
this is a work in progress and is slowly growing).